1932 case tests reporters

It would be simple today. Radio and TV networks, newspapers and magazines can send reporters wherever news occurs. And journalists can almost always send their reports back to the newsroom. After all, cell phones work almost everywhere. And where there's a phone, there's an Internet connection.

But this is the Information Age. It was different 75 years ago when the Industrial Age still reigned.

The 1932 trial of John Hughes Curtis, who would be convicted in Flemington of filing false police reports to hinder the apprehension of the Lindbergh kidnapper(s), presented a challenge to reporters who were collecting and transmitting information on a scale never seen before.

The public, which had thrilled to Charles and Anne Lindbergh's aircraft adventures, was horrified when their 20-month-old son was kidnapped on March 1, 1932.

And when Curtis, a Norfolk shipbuilder, was tried here for trying to hoax the famous couple, eyes and ears around the world turned to Flemington.

Commercial television hadn't been invented yet. But radio and print journalists swept into town and the competition was fierce. Each one wanted to be the first with an important interview with one of the trial's star witnesses, or a photo of Curtis, or Lindbergh, or perhaps Betty Gow, the child's nurse.

But then what? How would the information get back to editors and networks in the big cities?

Western Union installed special equipment, just for journalists, using space on the third floor of the old county courthouse. At a time when voice telephone lines were scarce and expensive - before satellite communications - the dots and dashes of Morse code and the telegraph were a gift, not a hindrance. The Post Office was also in the telegraph business; it set up eight sending instruments at the courthouse and another four at the Union Hotel across the street.

County employees guarded their phones to prevent "excited" reporters from making unauthorized toll calls, reported the Democrat. N.J. Telephone Company, the predecessor to what is now Embarq, said call volume went up 100% during the trial; one reporter kept an open line to New York City for almost three hours as Lindbergh testified.

During the trial, reporters here sent 100,000 words a day back to their editors.

But the most prolific writer was probably Joseph Hall, who wrote a half-million words in the trial's first week. He claimed it was "an all-time, all-world's record" and he did it with a fountain pen.

Hall was the official court reporter, and no ordinary pen would suffice. Hall "always uses a pen with a big ink tank that requires only infrequent filling. Hundreds of pencils would be needed otherwise, and valuable time would be lost in changing off," the Democrat reported.

The business of managing the reporters' large volume of information became a template that would be used in 1935 when Bruno Richard Hauptmann was tried for the kidnapping.

But in 1932, some information still traveled the old-fashioned way. For example, how would out-of-town reporters learn where "to seek prohibited refreshments after a sweltering day?" asked the Democrat. "The vanguard of the news fraternity has undoubtedly charted the dry countryside's infrequent speakeasies, and will pass the information along to their uninitiated brethren," the Democrat answered.

It was still Prohibition. That Constitutional amendment would be repealed before Hauptmann's trial began in January 1935.

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See more at nj.com/Lindbergh. If you have recollections, or recall your parents' or grandparents' stories about this era, we'd like to hear from you. Call Curtis Leeds at 782-4747 ext. 697. Or e-mail him at cleeds@hcdemocrat.com.

Eleven reprinted Democrats from 1932 and 1935, covering the Lindbergh kidnapping and the Hauptmann trial, are available as a boxed set at our office in Raritan Township. The price is $29.95 plus tax and shipping, if required. Call 782-4747 ext. 603 for details. We also sell several books about the case.